The Dinokeng Scenarios - Three Futures for South Africa

Perspectives from members of the Dinokeng Scenario Team
The Dinekeng Scenarios say that South Africa faces critical social and economic challenges especially related to unemployment and poverty, safety and security, education, and health.

The issue is how to transform a grossly incompetent state at national, local and provincial level. If we say we want “more state”, how do we transform it and convince ourselves that it can deliver with any degree of competence? Citizens need to take ownership and ask of themselves: What are we doing as citizens to become agents of change? What are we doing to build the future that was envisioned at the dawn of our democracy?"

These challenges are exacerbated by the global economic crisis. If we fail to recognise the severity of our challenges, and if we fail to address them, we will experience rapid disintegration and decline.Our state is too weak to address the challenges by itself. State-led development will not succeed in a country where state capacity is lacking.

In addition, pervasive state intervention – where the state is everything and all else is subordinate – breeds complacency and dependency among the citizenry and leads to the withdrawal of investment and disengage - ment by the business sector. We can address our critical challenges only if citizens and leaders from all sectors actively engage with the state to improve delivery and enforce an accountable government. If you missed The Big Debate: Dinokeng Scenarios series on eNews and eTV, you can view these online.

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